An Ordinary Lunacy

An Ordinary Lunacy (1963) is a novel by Australian writer Jessica Anderson.

An Ordinary Lunacy
First edition
AuthorJessica Anderson
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
GenreLiterary fiction
PublisherMacmillan
Publication date
1963
Media typePrint
Pages251pp
Preceded by 
Followed byThe Last Man's Head 

Story outline

After being attracted to Isobel Purdy at a party lawyer David Byfield finds himself defending her in court after she is charged with the murder of her husband. His defense is successful and the relationship between the two begins to blossom. But Isobel is a complicated woman and the relationship also becomes tangled and complicated.

Critical reception

Hope Hewitt in The Canberra Times, commenting on the 1988 re-issue of the novel, noted: "It is set in present-day Sydney; Anderson has an understated talent for evoking Sydney, and it docs not matter for this study of personal relationships, caught at the focus point of an apparent suicide, that 25 years have gone by. Sydney life is evoked subtly, assumed as being within the experience of her intelligent cosmopolitan readers; it is not insistent, but it is important."[1]

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature described the novel as combining "penetrating observation of a sophisticated segment of Sydney society with exploration of an obsessive passion."[2]

See also

References

  1. "An ordinary lunacy" by Hope Hewitt, The Canberra Times, 7 August 1988, p8
  2. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature 2nd edition, p29
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